Commentaries and critiques on the visual and performing arts in the greater Canton, Ohio area

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Mother Goosed Metaphors?

Mother Goosed Metaphors?

By Tom Wachunas

Exhibit: Out of the Woods and Into the Ring – works
in clay by Kristen Cliffel, at the Canton Museum of Art, 1001 Market Avenue
North, Canton, Ohio, THROUGH MARCH 6, 2016
www.cantonart.orgwww.kristencliffel.com

Fairytales have
always been handy cultural tropes for explaining life’s more vexing underpinnings. Many of these symbolic narratives are
traditionally inhabited by all manner of anthropomorphized animals and larger-than-life
humans caught up in fantastical struggles wherein curses are lifted, evil is
vanquished, and wishes magically come true. Essentially, fairytales are
mythical formulas, or paradigms for constructing an idealized world in which we
can happily live out even our most impossible dreams.

In this exhibit, while
Kristin Cliffel’s striking works in clay appropriate some familiar fairytale
icons, they do so in a manner that gleefully subverts our traditional
interpretations and applications of their meaning. Collectively, you could
consider their odd juxtapositions of symbols as deconstructing the codified
behaviors and expectations that fairytales commonly describe.

Entering the
gallery, we’re immediately greeted by a trio of characters mounted atop circus
pedestals in Roll Call: What Kind of
Mother Are You Anyway? The piece establishes a primary point of reference
in the exhibit – one that seemingly questions the stereotypes and expectations
of motherhood. A clown queen, a comforting storyteller and trained entertainer,
a nurturing mamma bear? The recurrence of axe forms and imitative wood textures
in some of the pieces might suggest mother as multi-tasker, chipping away at
the challenges of being a homemaker, or otherwise navigating the circus/circle
of life. In both Failing Upward and Unfinished Dreams, the Snow
White-looking face wears a Pinocchio nose. Are her dreams of climbing the
proverbial ladder of success tantamount to living a lie?

As forms modeled
in clay, these sculptures are wondrously crafted. Their spectacular colors and
bold textures (both illusory and real) often evoke vintage Disney animations.
Yet belying the sense of childhood innocence that such elements might conjure,
an aura of irony and very grownup, glib humor is palpable. The fawn’s head in Welcome Friends, for example,looks for all the world like a smiling
Bambi, mounted on the wall like a hunting trophy. A fractured fairytale indeed.

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About Me

Visual artist, journalist and teacher Tom Wachunas received his BFA (1973) and MFA (1975) degrees from The Ohio State University. From 1977 through 1991 he resided in New York City, where he painted and exhibited extensively and curated shows for “alternative” galleries. During much of that time he was the assistant artistic director of the Diane Jacobowitz Dance Theatre, designing sets and composing sound scores. He has been an accomplished arts journalist since 1986, writing hundreds of reviews and features on the visual and performing arts for numerous regional and international publications. Locally, since 2001, he has had one-man shows at Millworks Gallery (Akron), the Canton Museum of Art, Kent State University Stark, Malone University, and Second April Galerie in downtown Canton. He is a regular exhibitor in many area group shows. Currently he is the curator for Gallery 6000 on the Kent Stark campus, where he is also an adjunct instructor teaching Art as a World Phenomenon.